“Don’t waste any precious time worrying about whether you are being ambitious enough, or whether your goals fit anyone else’s criteria of what a ‘good’ goal should look like. One of the most important discoveries you can make in life is the discovery of what you genuinely love to do”
Brian Cormack Corr – careershifters.org 2010
So looking back on my fieldtrip from a week ago, getting up at 4.55h in the morning doesn't sound so terribly bad if you know I love fieldwork and research. We would visit the Eems Estuary for maintenance on the seal observation camera and I would get an impression of the estuary, where the seals of my research haul-out at low-tide. The camera observation platform can only be reached at high-tide, so the chances of spotting harbor seals would be quite low.
The trip in itself wasn't that spectacular, though it did help in 'bonding with the project'. Due to a thick layer of myst, Piet-Wim, a freelance fieldworker of IMARES, and I started the journey by car with quite a lack of sight on the surroundings. He promised me that I would be amazed by the amount of windturbines in the Eems Estuary. After three hours of driving, we arrived at the harbor of the Eems. From the deck of the M.S. Harder, the fieldtrip ship that we boarded, we had only 2 metres of sight... so I wondered, where are all those big windturbines?
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| Finally a clear sky after the myst - on the ship M.S. Harder |
The curtain of myst disappeared after a while and a view full of energizing windturbines became part of the landscape. Our company of the day were Klaas and Freek-Jan of the Eastern Waddenunit, part of the Ministry of Economic Business, Agriculture and Innovation (EL&I - formerly known as the Ministry of LNV). The Waddenunit protects the area against unauthorized trespassing and assists in scientific research and guided recreation.
During the short route to the observation camera site, Freek-Jan and I compared the quality of the thermoregulating clothing we were wearing. You just never know with cold weather! Klaas appeared to be a very enthusiastic hobby photographer, so we had enough food for thought and things to talk about. Meanwhile, Piet-Wim started with camera maintenance. There was no fieldwork for me to be done; the assignment for counting harbor porpoises was cancelled only a few days earlier.
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| Maintenance on the camera by Piet-Wim from IMARES |
The weather was constantly changing from myst to sunshine, from a clear view to dark clouds hovering above us in the sky. We were lucky though - on Monday and the days after the visit on Tuesday, the waters were covered with thick layers of driftice. Today on December 28th, the Eems was frozen over and huge blocks of dense ice weighted on the field of unbroken sea ice. On the fieldtrip day December 21st we had almost no sea ice, nothing to worry about!
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| A dark treathening sky across the Eems |
During the maintenance work on the camera, I took some pictures for my research report about seal group behaviour, focusing on the research method: the seal observation camera. The camera on top of the platform is a Stand Alone camera with 18x zoom, with a transmitter to program the camera from a distance and even so equipped with solar energy technology.
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| Me posing with the seal camera platform - Photo by Piet-Wim van Leeuwen |
We left the area after maybe an hour - or was it shorter? We left the camera behind in a dark scenery... spying on seals can start soon after when low-tide sets in...
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| The seal camera at high-tide - up and running |
The camera is part of the Eems observation project, located at the estuary. The Eems Estuary is protected by law as a nature reserve and implicates a very important habitat for migrating birds and seals. On the other end, the level of human activity and human interest in the area are quite high - just look at all those windturbines to generate energy and cargoships passing through. No wonder ecosystems and human-well being collide now and again. The future outcome of decisions needs to determine if some balance can be found.
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| Windturbines at work all over the place |
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| Cargoship in the harbor of the Eems |
At the end of the fieldtrip, I spotted a single harbor seal flushing through the water very close to the harbor. Maybe the seal is heading for the sandplate on the camera site, when low-tide sets in?
